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My Niece, Before and After

This photo of my precious petunia of a niece was originally way too dark…and when I first tried to fiddle with it, it seemed futile. Finally, though, I was able to salvage it.

Here was the original! Wow. We were in an arena and because I was needing to capture action with the cowboys and the horses, I’d bumped my ISO to 1600, opened my aperture as wide as it would go (2.0) and tried to keep my shutter speed as fast as I could.

Because of the ISO, it was going to be really tricky to do much with this photo; the lighter I made it, the more visible the grain (noise) would be.

But here’s what I did.

1. I opened the photo.

2. I took a big sip of Diet Dr Pepper.

3. I curve lightened the entire photo so that my niece’s face was no longer dark and covered in shadows.

4. This resulted in her hat and the background of the photo being too light, blown out. So I applied a layer mask to the Curve layer, then painted black on the layer mask to essentially “erase” the lightened area. This resulted in my niece’s pretty face being better “lit” without the surroundings being too light.

5. I flattened the image, then applied a very slight Unsharp Mask.

6. I ran the “Seventies” action from PW Action Set 2. Before the action, the colors of the photo were a little drab. The action desaturated the image enough to give the image an over all soft/faded look, which I think suits my sweet niece’s blond hair and fair skin and eyes.

Here’s the photo after editing. I definitely could have fiddled more, but I loved my niece’s sweet, natural expression and I wanted the photo to remain as natural as possible.

Before.

After.

New Photo Assignment coming this week! Details will be posted here late today.

While I’m definitely of the belief that nothing beats good light straight out of the camera – Photoshop sure is handy for those precious photos of our loves that need a little extra attention, isn’t it? Great tutorial!

http://wildlifeinthewoods.blogspot.com/ Susan in the Boonies

Wow! What a difference that made! Gorgeous photo, gorgeous niece.

Mary S

Really nice work on this photo.

http://www.chickenblog.com Natalie V2

The tools and resources available these days are amazing. So many pretty pictures rescued with a few clicks and tweaks!

http://successalongtheweigh.blogspot.com/ The Mrs @ Success Along the Weigh

That’s for the tips. It’s good to know you can save a precious photo like that! Makes me want to go back through my digi’s and see what I can “save!”

http://leavehappier.wordpress.com Amber

Wow – thanks for this! I probably give up and delete too many photots that could be fixed if I only knew how… it’s great to see these types of “before and after”s!

Christienne

I love these snippets of info!

But I need:
– A new camera – I have it picked out I just need the disposable funds!
– A photography class to speed up the learning!

A girl can dream!!

Tash

Basically, a bad photo made acceptable. Photography is no longer a form of art. The girl is beautiful, though.

http://humbleorigins.blogspot.com/ tj

…Wow, what a great save but so many steps and ‘tweaking’ to be done! But, so worth it… ;o)

…She’s such a pretty girl and so takes after her Mama… And, well, maybe a little bit of Pesky Tim…hee,hee,hee ;o)

…Blessings

Serena

I agree. She really does look like her mom in that picture. Beautiful.

I have used that trick a couple times! (thanks to a previous post of your telling us how to do it of course!) I have also discovered a program called Noise Ninja that I use for really grainy photos.Have you ever heard of it? It works wonders on really grainy pictures where bumping up your ISO so high is necessary.